Eric Claus’s claimed saving of greenhouse gases from reduced immigration is flawed. I agree that greenhouse emissions will not rise here, but globally, those would be migrants will still contribute greenhouse gases elsewhere in the world. The extent to which greenhouse gases will be reduced depends on whether migrants produce more emissions in Australia than they would if they remained in their own countries. Only by restricting migrants from poor countries, which tend to have lower per capita emissions, and increasing migration from the USA, which has very high per capita emissions, can a net saving be achieved. Globally, cutting migrant numbers will not yield much benefit in reduced emissions, though I strongly agree that it has merit on other grounds.

We need to look at other means, such as encouraging households to reduce energy consumption, increase the use of renewables like bio-fuels (for example Sweden’s public buses use bio-gas generated from cow manure), until we find or develop a safe, non-polluting, cheap and reliable energy alternative to nuclear and coal (the sun is probably the best, but right now it’s not cheap to convert it into electricity. Also the manufacture of solar cells is polluting and energy intensive). Perhaps a carbon tax on fuel and coal derived electricity could be used to fund R & D. I think Australia’s refusal to sign Kyoto is justifiable as long as China and India are not obliged to cut their emissions

If reducing national immigration results in better environmental outcomes, then would it follow that reducing interstate immigration would achieve the same result?

Queensland's interstate inflow is 0.97% of its population (Australian international inflow is just 0.59%*). Should the Queensland government take action to stem the flow of migrants from other states?

If we passed a law preventing people from moving house at all, that would stop migration flows altogether. Using Eric's analysis how many tonnes of CO2 would be saved?

In the spirit of this continued silliness, may I present the solution of everyone in Australia migrating overseas. Then Australia's greenhouse emissions would be zero and we'd save 550 megatonnes of C02 every year.

Sources:
[1] http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/4285EECCFE8D1B47CA2570DE00063FCA?opendocument
[2] http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/66588A4421E24BD9CA2570DE001AA461?opendocument

Let's take a look at what opening our borders and sharing with the residents of overpopulated countries, as Marilyn Shepherd would have us do, means in numerical terms. According to a New Scientist article last month the world average per capita footprint (a measure of consumption) is now 1.8 hectares. This is marginally above the average for rural China (1.6 hectares) but much less than the average in places like Shanghai. Australia's is about 7 hectares (from Redefining Progress), and the European average is around 5, the point where human welfare benefits from increasing consumption level off. The world average will, of course, get smaller as population grows and the environment is degraded. How many of you would want a standard of living like that of rural China for your family and friends? Leaving aside the religious zealots, I suspect that a good many of you think that you and yours will be part of the elite, while it is those nasty working class people who get to live in poverty and be grateful to work for you as nannies or gardeners in exchange for room and board.

If immigration is so wonderful for ordinary people, why do the countries with a lot of it tend to have high social inequality? Why is the US median wage worth less in real terms than in 1973 (www.epinet.org)? Why is the US minimum wage worth less in real terms than in 1960? How have Nordic countries with very little immigration or population growth of any kind managed to produce rising living standards for their people and make the top ten on the UN Human Development Index and the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index?

What about the bad effects in the long run if the ordinary people and governments in poor countries believe that they can solve problems of overpopulation and mismanagement by dumping their dissidents and surplus population over someone else's border? Wouldn't it be better if they started addressing these problems now and we started helping them in a constructive way?

Robg says Eric's analysis is flawed, however when people do not live in Australia, they cannot be seen and they do not exist. If they do not exist how can they produce greenhouse gasses? Everyone knows this, so it's understandable that Eric did not mention it.

The exception is of course America, which makes people exist through the intake of a large number of television programs. So it's not just tourism, but TV which adds to total CO2 emissions. Hence migration from America has no affect on greenhouse emissions.

Eric notes that "overseas tourism provides 1% of our GDP. I doubt if that means 1% of our energy usage, because manufacturing takes a significant piece." So by this logic, we should increase tourism and reduce manufacturing. Indeed, one of the great problems with migrants is that many of them work in manufacturing.

Enough of this "Sydney", "Sydney", "Sydney" - the point was made clear enough that those from Sydney/NSW want to block immigration. They think they are in the center of the world and don't care the least about the rest of Australia - and the truth is that the rest of us do not care about Sydney/NSW either and do not understand what people there were looking for in the first place and then why they stay and live so crowdedly.

So let us turn Australia into a confederation, allowing the independent country of NSW to legislate the toughest immigration laws in the world and let the rest of us live peacefully.

Next time when a Sydney person wants to bring their family from overseas - too bad, they will need to move interstate.

Yuy

Your post cracked me up!

Cheers
Kay